What you will NOT hear on Al Jazeera (English): the Salafi slogan
of the NATO-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA): "Christians to Beirut,
Alawis to the grave'

Changes at Al Jazeera after the Iraq invasion, 2003

After the Iraq invasion in 2003, Baghdad bureau chief Faisal Yasiri was replaced by Wadah Khanfar,
a Palestinian born man who had been reporting from Afghanistan. Yasiri
says Al Jazeera's Islamist influences were "creating tension to fit
their beliefs and increase the differences between people'. Khanfar
replaced the secular head of Al Jazeera Mohammed Jassem Ali and,
according to former Al Jazeera correspondent Shaker Hamid,
the channel "became a platform for (Sunni) extremists " There is clear
sectarianism in Iraq, and Al Jazeera takes the Sunni side' (Gillespie
2007).

Wadah Khanfar as Director General of the Al Jazeera
network (2007-2011) has agreed that Islam rose in the news but denied
that Al Jazeera had become Islamist. "Maybe you have more Islamic voices
[on the network] because of the political reality on the ground'; but
he claimed their channel maintained diversity of views. However
researcher Kristen Gillespie points out that, on the
network, "Sunni religious figures are almost always treated
deferentially as voices of authority on almost any issue" (Gillespie
2007).

Hafez Al-Mirazi, Al-Jazeera's Washington bureau
chief denounced the channel's Islamist drift in an interview with the
daily Al Hayat in June 2007, saying:

"Al-Jazeera has crossed the line " [in] the Wadah Khanfar era there
was a dramatic change, especially because of him selecting assistants
who are hardline Islamists' (Ferjani 2010).

"Arab Spring': Qatar and Al Jazeera push "regime change'

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After the events in Egypt and Tunisia, the Government of Qatar, with
the US, pushed hard for "regime change' in Libya and Syria, promoting
stories of "regime atrocities' to press the demand for foreign military
intervention and "regime change'.

In Libya Al Jazeera was an important part in the
fabrication of stories over a massacre of demonstrators in Benghazi.
Indeed Libya officials accused Qatar (which had directly armed and
funded opposition groups) and Al Jazeera (which had spread lies) of
fomenting the Libyan rebellion (see Youtube: "Libyan officials say
Qatar, Al Jazeera arranged revolt'). An online video (Youtube: "Libya
protest: Aljazeera lies about killing in Benghazi') makes it plain that
those shot in Benghazi on 17 February 2011 were pro-government
demonstrators waving green flags. Yet Al Jazeera became central to the
demand for foreign intervention to stop "Madman Gadaafi' killing his own
people. The sources used were those who would come to government after
the NATO intervention. Amnesty International (France)
would later retract its accusation that President Gadaafi had used
"black mercenaries' to kill civilians (Youtube: "'Humanitarian
Intervention' in Libya - the duplicitous game'), but only after Gadaafi
himself had been publicly murdered.

Al Jazeera backed a similar process in Syria: blaming the Assad government
for massacres which were often committed by the armed opposition
itself, precisely to incite foreign intervention. Only select opposition
sources were used.

"When Al Arabiya [from Saudi Arabia] and Al Jazeera
[from Qatar] do comment directly on Syrian affairs, they tend to paper
over the rebels' flaws and emphasize the conflict's religious fault
lines ... [both] gave a platform to extremist Sunni cleric Adnan al-Arour,
who once said of Syria's Alawite minority that Sunnis "shall mince them
in meat grinders and feed their flesh to the dogs', for their support
of President Bashar Al Assad " [yet] Al Jazeera introduced him as
someone "who is described as the biggest nonviolent instigator against
the Syrian regime' (Al Qassemi 2012).

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The Syrian opposition was carefully screened. Al Jazeera assigned Ahmed Ibrahim (brother of Anas al-Abdah, a member of the Syrian National Council and the Muslim Brotherhood) to its Syria desk. Fadi Salem,
Dubai based researcher, says "Many opposition figures [who are inside
Syria] but do not see eye to eye with Saudi or Qatari foreign policy on
Syria are "banned' on both channels' (Al Qassemi 2012).

Examples of Al Jazeera's propaganda war against Syria can now be seen
in a number of online videos. One of these exposes lies about a family
supposedly murdered by the Syrian Army (Youtube: "Al Jazeera Lies about
Dead Family in Syria'), while another shows insurgents tutoring a child
for a video to be sent to Al Jazeera (Youtube: "SYRIA Leaked Video Of Al
Jazeera Using A Child To Fake Injuries'). The most insidious pattern,
though, has been the "false flag' terrorism: most often
through the use of video taken by the FSA of their own atrocities,
which is then used to blame the Syrian Government for those same crimes.
In one case Al Jazeera took video directly from Syrian state
television, of captured fighters confessing to multiple murders, then
turned this around to claim the murders had been committed by the Syrian
Army and that the confessions were forced (Youtube: "Al-Jazeera
involved in killing Syrians'). In another case, a mother had been shown
grieving over her dead child, whom Al Jazeera said had been shot by the
Syrian Army. When the mother was later interviewed she said both she and
her dying child had been abducted by the same "terrorist, armed
criminals' who had shot her son (Youtube: "Interview with Mother of Sari
Saoud').

One of the most notorious of these "false flag operations was the dreadful Houla Massacre
of 100 civilians, just days before a UN Security Council meeting on
Syria. At first the western media and UN figures blamed Syrian Army
shelling of the village for the deaths. When that was disproved, as most
had been killed at close range, the accusation turned to "shabeeha',
un-named pro-government thugs. Al Jazeera gave exclusive coverage to
anti-government "activists' and exile leaders promoting this line
(Youtube: "Louay Safi on Houla Massacre', "Syrian activists decry
"massacre' in Houla'). Pro-FSA "activists' led UN observers to areas
where these claims were repeated. However German investigative
journalists established that opposition fighters had murdered the
pro-Government villagers (including some Sunnis who had participated in
the recent elections), then blamed the government, in an attempt to
secure UN and NATO intervention. This sorry story and the UN's role in
it has now been documented (Youtube: "US-Sponsored Terrorists Committed
Houla Massacre' and "The Houla massacre, the game changing false flag
operation of Western powers'; also Anderson 2012).